[AI translation] Now we are gathered together specifically to participate in the most sacred rite of our church life: to eat the bread again, to drink the cup, and thus proclaim the Lord's death until He comes. This is the programme of the whole Christian life: to proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. It is not only a reminder of this, not only a teaching of the Lord's Supper, but also a confirmation of it, a preparation for it, in this holy hospitality."The death of the Lord!" In many of us, the consciousness of the Lord's death is lived as a divine ransom for our sins, as the full payment of a great debt. The death of Jesus is the great blood atonement on the basis of which God proclaimed forgiveness of sins. Yes: Jesus' death means that too. Substitutionary satisfaction for divine justice, and more than that. This deeper, richer meaning of the Lord's death is seen in the meaning of the Old Testament blood sacrifices. When a dove, lamb, goat, or any other animal was sacrificed on the altar, it was a symbolic act from the beginning. It expressed the fact that in this slain animal the sacrificer himself was giving his blood, that is, his soul, that is, his life, to the Lord. The blood, that is to say, the soul, the life, was laid on the altar: as a sign that the sacrificer did not want to keep it for himself, but offered it up, consecrated it to the Lord in its entirety. It could be said that he gives it back to the Lord. Then the fire of God's glory is kindled upon it, which consumes it. But this burning is not a destruction, but rather a transformation. It becomes a burnt offering, the smoke of which rises. In contact with the glory of God, it is itself spiritualised, as it were, by the Spirit of God, transformed into a form of life in which it is completely permeated and permeated by the reality of God. The burning of the sacrifice by fire on the altar symbolized the transformation, the evaporation, of the sacrifice into the form of God's life. By killing the animal, that is, by giving its blood, its life, and by burning it on the altar, this was what was meant to be expressed, this transformation into the divine reality of life. It is as if God were calling man to sacrifice in order to bring about in him the sanctification and thus to glorify him. Sinful man is no more: he is given to God and God has taken him. He is transformed, he becomes another. This is what the Old Testament sacrifice expresses.
But what is there only a symbol is a reality fulfilled in the sacrifice of Christ. In him the complete sacrifice takes place. It is He who gives His blood - that is, His soul, His life - completely and without reserve. And in Him is also realized what is symbolized by the smoke that rises: the transformation, the transposition, the evaporation in the reality of divine glory. For He is the One who not only died on the cross, but was actually resurrected, glorified, ascended into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. The fullness of God's redemptive work, which He intended to do for a sinful world, has already been completed and accomplished in Jesus. This, then, is the meaning of the Lord's death, his sacrifice for us and in our place. In which our faith already foresees the fullness and consummation of redemption, until it will be made manifest to all, when the crucified and risen, glorified Lord will come again.
So in the sacrifice of Christ, that is, in the giving of His blood, life, and glorification, the great turning point has been accomplished: the transformation of sinful man and the whole created universe into the kingdom of God that is to come has begun. In Jesus, the kingdom of God is truly at hand. It has begun! Not in all its glory, not in its fullness, but it has come, it has come into the world, it is already here. The turn has taken place: for in Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Man, the sacrifice by which God calls man, the world, into his holiness, into his glory, has already been accomplished. This sacrifice means that the redeemed world, which the Bible calls the new heaven and the new earth, whose glory is described by the beauties of the heavenly Jerusalem, is the kingdom of God, for whose coming we pray in the Lord's Prayer: 'Thy kingdom come', has already appeared among us, like an island already beginning to rise out of the sea. John the Baptist could already hear the waves crashing, signalling that something was rising from the depths. The decisive breakthrough had happened in Jesus. In Paul and John, the emergence of the new earth is already there, like an island in the sea. So this new world, the kingdom of God, the age to come, has already, as it were, broken into the present world, the sinful, lost world. And indeed: the whole of the first church, the early Christian church, as we read about it in the Bible, was like a piece of living, real breaking into the eschatology, the end, the new heaven and the new earth. And indeed it was: a ray projected into the present of the kingdom of God to come. It was the mystical body of the crucified, risen, glorified Christ in the world and as a witness to the world. In him were projected on earth the moments of the coming kingdom of heaven.
And indeed it is true that the essence of the Church is not of earth, earthly, but heavenly. It was not created by human initiative, it was not founded by someone, but the Church is first and foremost a transcendent, otherworldly something here on earth. The speech and life of the first Christians was a testimony to the hidden yet real presence of the living Lord in their midst. They were truly living in Christ, like a vine in the vine, grafted into the life of the crucified and risen Christ, into eternal life! The first Christian church was truly an island of that new age to come in this world, a shining, projected light of the reality of the coming kingdom of God. This is what Christ's death, Christ's sacrifice, meant for them!
Now the Word calls us to proclaim this sacrifice of the Lord, the death of the Lord, until He comes. How? Well: by eating and drinking the bread and the cup, the things that symbolize the Lord's sacrifice. But this eating and drinking is not simply a pious remembrance of that sacrifice, but much more than that: it is a sharing in it. It is this sacrament that Jesus gave as a sign in which our participation takes place, in which we participate in the turning point that Christ's death and resurrection began in the life of the world. This participation in Christ's sacrifice is not, of course, by magic, but by faith. To receive the Lord's Supper is to give my life and surrender it to Christ in order to share in his sacrifice: his death and resurrection. "Knowing that our old man is crucified with him, ...And if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him... For if by the likeness of his death we have been made one with him, we shall surely be also by the likeness of his resurrection." (Rom 6:6, 8, 5) The gesture by which you come to the Lord's table is nothing less than entering into Christ's sacrifice by offering yourself and being united to Him in it. In the Lord's Supper, we participate not only passively, by accepting something: grace, forgiveness of sins, but also actively, by giving ourselves into Christ's sacrifice. By faith. We throw ourselves into the crucified and risen Christ. But in such a way that the work of Christ, His sacrifice, remains the great prerequisite and spiritual embrace in which all this sacrifice of ours is possible. Jesus, as it were, embraces us in his sacrifice.
Well, it is precisely this embracing, this grafting in, this immersion, this initiation, that takes place in the Lord's Supper. In it, we enter by faith, by denying and offering ourselves, into the sacrifice of Christ. We die with Christ, in Christ, in order to rise again, also with Him, in Him, to a new life, now fully consecrated to God. With Christ and in Christ we are also blessed. The life of communion is therefore not some pious, ritualistic ritual, but an ever more and more intense immersion, an immersion in the sacrifice of Christ. It is a self-immersion in Christ's death and a participation in his resurrection, his glorification, his divine life. The communion life is the giving up of my whole carnal, earthly, self-interested life as a burnt offering to be transformed into a form of being imbued with the glory of God. That we have truly taken the Lord's Supper will be shown by the extent to which our words and actions henceforth become a sign of that other world, of the kingdom of God to come! The life of a truly communion-going person is a sign, a reflection of the salvation to come. The actions of a man initiated into Christ's sacrifice are all a multitude of glimpses of the glory to come, a foreshadowing of the heavenly kingdom that will be fulfilled at Christ's return. "Proclaim the Lord's death until He comes" - as you vowed when you received the Lord's Supper: in thanksgiving for this grace, you consecrate your whole life to the Lord, and as His redeemed ones, you live for His glory!
Let me end by telling you a story. I recently read. A pastor was walking and met the richest man in town. During the conversation, the rich man said to him. "I'll tell you now," said the pastor. He said, pointing to the attic of a small cottage: In this room lives a poor widow and her two little children. In one bed lies the woman, in the other the two little children. They have no fire, they are cold. They have nothing to eat, they are starving. They can't afford medicine or a doctor. Go to those poor people and buy them everything they need. Take them upstairs. And if even after that, you still don't know where heaven is, come to me and I will reimburse you for all the money you have spent on them. The end of the story is that the rich man did not go to the pastor to ask for reimbursement of his expenses. This is the communion life! That is: to radiate into the world, by the deeds of a life sacrificed to God, the light of the glory of God's kingdom to come.
So let us pray together with the words of our beautiful song:
We long, Jesus, to be united with you;
Our hearts will be holy if you sanctify them.
Grant that as members of the head,
Let us yield to thee, who livest in us.
"Let us, like a good vine, let us be in you,
That good moisture may flow into the vine,
And let our hearts be like your heart,
In our lives, your life for all to see.
(Canto 438, verse 7)
Amen
Date: 26 October 1952.